They had separated, and Sir Walter’s eye was caught by a portrait.  But he forgot it a moment later in passing interest of a blazoned coat of arms upon the frame—­a golden bull’s head on a red ground.  The heraldic emblem was tarnished and inconspicuous, yet the spectator felt curiously conscious that it was not unfamiliar.  It seemed that he had seen it already somewhere.  He challenged Mary with it presently; but she had never observed it before to her recollection.

Sir Walter enjoyed his daughter’s interest, and finding that his company among the pictures added to Mary’s pleasure, while his comments caused her no apparent pain, he declared his intention of seeing more.

“You must tell me what you know,” he said.

“It will be the blind leading the blind, dearest,” she answered, “but my delight must be in finding things I think you’ll like.  The truth is that neither of us knows anything about what we ought to like.”

“That’s a very small matter,” he declared.  “We must begin by learning to like pictures at all.  When Ernest comes, he will want us to live in his great touring car and fly about, so we should use our present time to the best advantage.  Pictures do not attract him, and he will be very much surprised to hear that I have been looking at them.”

“We must interest him, too, if we can.”

“That would be impossible.  Ernest does not understand pictures, and music gives him no pleasure.  He regards art with suspicion, as a somewhat unmanly thing.”

“Poor Mr. Travers!”

“Do not pity him, Mary.  His life is sufficiently full without it.”

“But I’ve lived to find out that no life can be.”  In due course Ernest and Nelly arrived, and, as Sir Walter had prophesied, their pleasure consisted in long motor drives to neighboring places and scenes of interest and beauty.  His daughter, in the new light that was glimmering for her, found her father’s friends had shrunk a little.  She could speak with them and share their interests less whole-heartedly than of old; but they set it down to her tribulation and tried to “rouse” her.  Ernest Travers even lamented her new-found interests and hoped they were “only a passing phase.”

“She appears to escape from reality into a world of pictures and music,” he said.  “You must guard against that, my dear Walter.  These things can be of no permanent interest to a healthy mind.”

For a fortnight they saw much of their friends, and Mary observed how her father expanded in the atmosphere of Ernest and Nelly.  They understood each other so well and echoed so many similar sentiments and convictions.

Ernest entertained a poor opinion of the Italian character.  He argued that a nation which depended for its prosperity on wines and silk—­“and such wines”—­must have too much of the feminine in it to excel.  He had a shadowy idea that he understood the language, though he could not speak nor write it himself.